Glimpses Through the Looking Glass
by frazzledsoul
Summary: Gilmore-related drabbles that don't have a place in a regular story. Some of these are AU, some are not. Enjoy!
1. Cheesecake (Luke and Lorelai)

Lorelai Gilmore Danes didn't expect to have empty nest syndrome hit her quite like this.

She'd spent much of her adult life – even long before she was technically an adult – tethered to Rory's side and not regretting a second of it. Then Rory was grown up and off exploring the world, and she was settled down with Luke in their unconventional but happily domestic manner. Rory was in DC living out her dream, and then she was technically in NYC but more often everywhere else: Los Angeles, Seattle, Phoenix, New Orleans, Australia, sometimes Europe. Lorelai missed her, but she was never lonely or at a loss to impart semi-parental wisdom: April resided in their house at least one weekend a month and half of the summer, and it turned out that Luke couldn't handle all of those teenage girl crises all by himself. There were bad boyfriends and semi-decent boyfriends and impromptu boat thefts and there was that incident with a goat that led to Miss Patty's dance studio being set on fire (and okay, Kirk was mostly responsible for that one, but it was the closer to a very interesting summer, so it all ran together in Lorelai's head) and by the end of it Lorelai was thankful that Rory had saved most of her drama for her college years.

Lane and Liz and Sookie needed their help with their expanding broods (exactly what kind of fertility agents were in the Stars Hollow water supply in 2007, anyway?) more than either Luke or Lorelai had anticipated during those years, and by the time it was all over Lorelai was more than happy to take a breath and enjoy life with just her and her man. She hadn't missed the conventional life they didn't have, and if she let her thoughts stray from time to time about the things she had wanted a long time ago, she still knew she'd choose the good things in her life now over the year of misery and confusion that her former obsessions had led her to.

Then Rory got pregnant and moved home, moving both her and Luke into a new stage of life they hadn't quite been anticipating: newlyweds as well as grandparents. Jess and April and Logan became staples of their home life as their grandson brought new joys and terrors into the fold, and Lorelai was reminded how much she had missed Rory these past ten years.

Now Rory and her toddler son were settled into the Queens neighborhood Rory had planned on making her home two years ago. She had a day job editing newsletters and press releases for an academic publishing house and was several months into a relationship with Logan, who had his own apartment in Manhattan. Things seemed to be going well, and the main reason whey hadn't moved in together yet seemed to revolve around whose household would take prominence.

Lorelai knew that there was a good chance she'd probably have to make another adjustment in the near future: being the mother of a daughter happily settled into married life. Maybe things would change and maybe they wouldn't: for her, marriage had merely solidified and strengthened the bond she already had with the man she had long ago chosen to spend her life with, and maybe it would be the same for her daughter. Her life was still full and rich and wonderful in a lot of ways: she still spoke to Rory every day and saw her at least once a month. Jess and April still visited frequently – far more frequently than they had before the marriage and baby had brought them closer together – but not nearly as often as when Rory had lived in Stars Hollow. She still ran the Dragonfly (which now had two locations!) and came home to Luke and Paul Anka just like she had done for the past eleven years.

Still, she couldn't help thinking of how much she had treasured having Rory and her son living above the diner for the past two years, and was a little lonelier now that things had changed again.

As usual, Luke sensed the changes in her mood over the past couple of weeks and had responded the best way he knew how: through actions instead of words.

One Monday Lorelai returned from work sensing new and wonderful smells coming into the kitchen, but her husband was momentarily nowhere to be found.

She stepped over to the refrigerator and opened the door gingerly.

Luke had moved her junk food to the bottom of the fridge, and placed the more sensible items on the top shelf.

Taking up space in the middle were her three favorite kinds of cheesecake: strawberry, caramel apple, and – of course – coffee.

Lorelai spun around as Luke let himself into the kitchen. He nonchalantly crossed over to the fridge and reached around her to remove some ground beef from the freezer.

"When did you have time to make all these cakes?" she asked him.

"I had some free time this afternoon," he replied as he retrieved a pan from the oven drawer and turned on the stove's knobs to begin preparing dinner. "Plus, I figured you've been feeling kind of down lately and –" He shrugged. "It's not a big deal."

Lorelai crossed over to the stove in two steps and embraced him from behind. "You know you're the best husband, ever, right?"

Luke chuckled. "Glad you think so."

Lorelai hugged him tighter and felt that same wondrous wave of gratitude coat her insides that she'd felt as a constant presence for most of her life with him.

No matter what other changes life had in store, she had Luke – and his frequent selfless gestures, as well as the rest of him – as something she could always count on.

"I do," she told him. "I really do."


	2. Cheesecake (Lane and Zach)

_"Baby Baby One More Time!"_

 _"It's All Over Now Baby Blue!"_

"I thought you guys were serious about this," Zach remarked as he entered the living room and gingerly handed his oldest son his guitar. Steve stopped giggling long enough to gingerly plug the guitar into the amp.

Just like his parents, Steve Van Gerbig took his rock and roll very seriously.

Well, sometimes.

It had started off as a lighthearted dinner banter: Steve and Kwan had eagerly dived into the chocolate chip cheesecake that Lane had brought home from Luke's that afternoon, and started playing a game where they would substitute any song with "baby" in the title. The cheesecake was now thoroughly devoured, and after about ten minutes of this game the boys had managed to pester their parents into teaching them the more obscure of the titles they had suggested.

As far as linguistic wordplay went, Lane and Zach had preferred this game to the time when the boys insisted on substituting "butt" for "heart" and had spent the next few days blasting a junior high punk version of a certain Celine Dion song on their respective instruments.

Steve and Kwan had been raised by musicians in a musician's household, and frequently accompanied their parents on tour when neither of them had to remain stationary enough in order to maintain whatever day jobs they had at the time period. They knew everything from the Ramones to Bob Dylan to Arcade Fire by heart. Steve played guitar and bass while Kwan preferred drums. They both liked punk and metal but Steve also had a weakness for country, much like his father. His idol was Joe Kwon, the cellist for The Avett Brothers who much like the rest of the band, thought he was actually in a punk band. Zach could still remember that moment of fatherly pride when he and Lane first took the boys to see the band and five-year-old Steve declared from his perch on his father's shoulders that he was seeing a future me on the stage.

The boys couldn't remember the song "The Big Three Killed My Baby," and now their parents had decided that they were dearly in need of an early White Stripes tutorial.

"I am, Dad," Steve assured his father as Kwan bounced up and down from behind the drum set, anxious to begin.

Their parents shared a small smile as Zach plugged in his own guitar besides his son's and started to teach him the guitar chords that were part of any self-respecting young boy's education.


	3. Cheesecake (Rory and Logan, AU)

_This is an AU story that's part of a WIP I've been working on for a while. All I'll say about this particular Gilmore timeline is that Rory and Logan did not break up in 2007, and this story takes place a few years after that point._

"This is incredible," Rory remarked as she scarfed down the piece of bourbon peach cheesecake that Logan had placed in front of her.

Logan sat back in the chair across from her and felt a small – maybe insignificant, but he didn't really care at this point – feeling of relief that Rory was happy about something

She'd been closed off in the few weeks since they found out. Disappointment and sadness warred within him at the situation they'd found themselves in for the second time, but he was mostly concerned about her. She'd been so focused, so careful, so hyper vigilant that she hadn't seemed to really let herself feel anything else about the situation. He knew that she wanted to feel as happy about it as she had the first time, but she wouldn't allow herself to. Not until she was sure everything was going to be okay.

Then it had all crashed down as quickly as the news had come, and she'd been wrapped up in a tight coil of grief and self-flagellation ever since. Nothing he had tried had seemed to get through to her.

"Where did you get the recipe for this?' Rory asked him as she polished off the last of her dessert. "I know you didn't get it from Luke. This is a lot fancier than Mom and the boys would ever scarf down."

"Jess," Logan said softly. "He got it from his wife's family."

Rory trembled a little as she lowered the fork back onto the plate. It was a slight movement, barely perceptible, but Logan saw it.

"Look," Logan said. "I didn't mean to –"

"Don't worry about it," Rory told him. "It's not –" she sighed. "Life goes on, right?"

"I know you've been having a hard time with it," Logan said cautiously.

"I don't want you to continue walking around eggshells around me," Rory said as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the early evening California sunset framing her face.

"I'm not," Logan told her. "Well, I didn't – I didn't mean to."

"You did," Rory admonished him, "and I appreciate it. But I kind of want things to go back to normal. As much as they can, anyway."

"You know we can try –"

Rory shook her head. "I'm not ready to talk about it yet," she told him.

Logan reached out for her hand, rubbing his hand over her fingers as he felt the familiar comfort of their rings clacking together.

"I know," he assured her. "I know."


	4. Chocolate Pecan Pie (Luke and Lorelai)

_As you might have noticed, the title of this collection has changed to a general drabble collection. There will be no logic in what gets posted here other than "because I felt like it."_

 _However, this particular drabble is inspired by #NationalChocolatePecanPieDay and my desire to have Lorelai coax Luke into cooking delicious Southern food._

 _August 2008_

The diner had taken on its customary late evening silence as the last customers continued to filter out. Usually, this silence was punctuated by the owner's longtime girlfriend and daughter teasing, chatting, and begging him for favors, but none of that chatter was to be found tonight.

Lorelai and April sat side by side at the counter, sullenly nursing identical cups of coffee.

"It's a great opportunity," Luke reminded Lorelai as he refilled her coffee cup.

"I know," Lorelai replied, flashing him a reluctant smile.

"She'd be in DC full time, right?" Luke asked.

"Yeah," Lorelai said. "I mean, I don't know why I'm surprised. Half of Rory's stuff has been stashed down there for almost a year. I guess I just got used to the idea that she'd come back here after it was all over. I got to the point where I was practicing it in my head. 'Yeah, my daughter works for the New York Times, but I still see her all the time. ' Only now I have to change it. 'Yeah, my daughter writes for the Washington Post, and I only see her twice a year. If I'm lucky."

"It's less than an hour to fly from Washington DC to Hartford," April pointed out, running her fingers over the well-worn handle of her cup.

"I know," Lorelai said, silently cursing herself for not being aware that April flew four hours each way one weekend a month in order to spend time with her father. "I guess I'm not sure Rory has the stamina for these flight that you do."

"I guess," April replied glumly as Luke crossed over to her side of the counter and refilled her cup.

"I know why you're sulking, too, and he's not worth it," Luke told his daughter. "You were always too good for that guy."

"You say that about _everyone_ I'm interested in," April replied.

"And I'm always right," Luke told her as he walked over the door and flipped the diner sign to indicate that the establishment was closed for the night.

"I know you're disappointed," Lorelai said, turning to April. "Summer romances have a way of ending the way they did for you. It might make them even more special in a way."

April sighed. "I was going back to New Mexico next week anyway," she reasoned aloud. "It doesn't make me feel any better, though."

"I have an idea that might help," Luke said as he disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a variety of pie too delectably indulgent to be regularly served to even the notorious sugar addict with whom he shared a home.

Or even rarely.

Chocolate pecan pie.

"Is that –" Lorelai began.

"I caved," Luke told her. "Don't get used to it."

"Oh, we Southern damsels might find that we need this kind of delicacy on a regular basis to soothe our broken hearts," Lorelai declared in an accent that was not at all convincing.

April giggled as she cut into the first piece of pie, placing it on the plate that Luke laid out in front of her.

"I knew that it was a bad idea for Rory to share what she found at other people's diners," Luke told them. "And don't try to get me to serve this stuff to everyone else. This is just for you two."

"Can you try the Mississippi mud stuff next?" April asked as she eagerly dug into the pie.

"Maybe," Luke said as he shared a knowing look with Lorelai. "I'll think about it."

They both knew he would cave on this one, too.


	5. Photography (Luke and Lorelai)

_This drabble is what I came up with for #NationalPhotographyDay, which took place on August 19. I've definitely taken some liberties with my interpretation of the photos in the background of Luke and Lorelai's house in the revival. Basically, if I couldn't see something very well, I made up what was there. I tried not to stray too far out of what was possible, but who knows._

The home decor in the Gilmore-Danes household had evolved over the years.

The house's second – and permanent – remodel didn't really get started until the year after Luke and Lorelai had reconciled for good. The first order of business was moving the majority of Luke and April's belongings from the apartment above the diner to Lorelai's house and adding on a bedroom upstairs for April. The curtains that had once hung in the kitchen and back wall of Luke's apartment were hung up in the bedroom he shared with Lorelai, and the leather chair that had been a favorite of his nephew's occupied its place beside the sofa in the living room. The sci-fi novels he and April passed around took space besides Lorelai's tattered romance novels in their bookcases, and box sets of Fringe and Doctor Who were placed next to her copies of Grey's Anatomy. They moved his bed over from the apartment into the bedroom and replaced the flat-screen TVs that Christopher had purchased shortly before Lorelai's ill-advised marriage to him ended.

Looking back, Lorelai often thought that her original vision for how their house had looked was disturbingly antiseptic and pristine. There was little personality or color put into her new home, because there was no time for a happy couple to inhabit it. Their relationship had started to fall apart soon after the first remodel had been completed, and what was left was the empty shell of what she thought a grown-up person's life and marriage should look like. Moving someone else into that space hadn't helped: aside from her new stepdaughter's paintings hung up in the kitchen, the house still remained devoid of anything containing joy or direction. Much of it still didn't seem to belong to her, and the fact that she somehow kept it almost spotless for over a year was the clearest indication of that.

That all changed when Luke and April officially moved in. Their belongings melded with hers, and Luke's presence in particular soon made itself known. She kept her lacy curtains in the living room, but he moved in the hideous striped sofa that he had somehow kept in the upper floor of the apartment that she barely knew existed. The walls were painted a masculine green, but the feminine paintings on the wall were chosen by her. The stove doubled in size now that it was being used, but the kitchen was also decorated with quirky flamingos.

Every successful partnership was about compromise, and the house became a reflection of _both_ of their personalities. Much to Lorelai's delight, she was happy enough with her life to allow things to get messy again, although Luke's presence ensure that it never got quite as disheveled as it had been in her single days. It was a life and a home that was shared, and she was content with that, even if marriage wasn't officially a part of it.

It took a while for the family photographs to become quite as representative of their relationship as the rest of the house was.

Most of the pictures in the living room were pictures of Lorelai and Rory that had been taken years ago. Pictures of the other family members started to be featured alongside the old ones from Rory's childhood as time went by, but it was a slow process. A picture of April on her first day of high school took its place on the mantle, and the picture of Luke and Lorelai on his boat that she proudly claimed as her Facebook profile for years also had a place up there. A picture of Doula dolled up in Renassiance gear was placed on one of the end tables, and a picture of Luke's mother was placed on the table in front of the windows next to a picture of Lane and Zach's sons peeking out of giant barrels during a tour stop in Germany.

The computer room and the hallway upstairs probably featured the most even distribution of photos: a picture of Luke with his parents adorned the central spot of the wall next to a picture of Luke and April on her graduation trip to Alaska, and the picture that Rachel had taken of Luke and Lorelai many years ago during the Firelight Festival took up a prized spot next to the dresser. The hallway upstairs had photos of Luke and Lorelai together at the cabin, April during her first day of college, and Rory receiving a journalism award as well as a photo collage of Lane, Zach, and their boys at various concert halls they had visited during their long life of on-and-off touring.

There were private photos, too, always taken in far-flung destinations when it was just the two of them: an isolated mountain cabin in Colorado, a bungalow in the Florida Keys, a tucked-away cabin in the Cayman Islands. The pictures were always kept locked away for moments as private as the ones that had created them, and they weren't allowed anywhere near their children or the nebulous destination of "the cloud." If their existence seemed uncharacteristic of Luke, Lorelai knew that there were some sides of him he shared only with her, and that passion and tenderness was as much a part of him as everything else that she loved.

This entire home decorating scene was entirely reshuffled once Luke and Lorelai's long-delayed marriage finally took place, quickly followed by the arrival of their first grandchild.

The mantle in the living room quickly grew more crowded now that the older photos were forced to share space with a new picture of the baby at every stage of life. No one had been expecting his arrival, and yet it seemed to be the final step in melding their family closer together: the old boundaries and limits they had set in place to keep their relationship as conflict-free as possible had disintegrated, and both Luke and Lorelai knew that they didn't miss them. This new togetherness was quickly reflected in the changes taking shape on their walls and end tables. The framed floral decorations were replaced by jubilant shots of the nuptials where it had all come together, and the fabric and wall patterns on the stairs were tossed out for photos of Jess and Rory on her book tour and pictures of Luke and one-year-old Rick decked out in flannel shirts and baseball caps. A picture of April holding her nephew as a newborn in the hospital as Rory looked on was proudly sandwiched between them.

However, the two photos that most represented the newest stage of their long relationship were displayed above their bed, where the farmland pictures chosen long ago by Luke had once resided.

On the left was a close-up picture of their hands clutched together at their wedding table, the glint of the setting sun reflecting the light of the wedding rings.

On the right was a picture of Rick blowing out the candles at his first birthday party, held in place on either side by a grinning Rory and Logan. Jess and April could be seen at the edge of the shot, identical grins plastered on both of their faces.

It the culmination of their lives as they had become: everything she had once feared wasn't possible, and everything that she now knew had been meant to be all along.

This was her life: her marriage, her family, her _middle_. The photos were proof.


	6. Black Cats (Rory and Logan, AU)

_This story is in honor of #NationalBlackCatDay. We return to the Rory and Logan AU where they never broke up in 2007. I may do something more substantial with this later on, but for now I'm just trying it out._

 _And before you ask, Day of The Dead themed weddings are a thing, because my stepbrother had one. Some stuff is just too crazy for even me to make up._

Rory and Logan's transition into cat people was a gradual one.

The first cat was a wedding present from one of Logan's more eccentric co-workers. Rory had expected electronics or dinner sets or even furniture if she got lucky, but it was the lithe, mewing kitten was a bit of a shocker. She was sly and prone to mercurial behavior, and her favorite trick was randomly leaping out from the back of the sofa and landing on the shoulders of whoever happened to be sitting there. She could often be found napping next to Rory's carefully indexed copies of letters and journals from various literary figures.

They named her Sylvia.

Their second cat was the adopted pet of the newspaper where Rory worked: she had mysteriously shown up in the lobby one day and had been content to be fed and then disappear behind the alley. She had warmed up to Rory and had taken to sitting in contemplation beside her whenever Rory retreated to the steps in the back of the office when she was stuck on a story. When the paper had to change office locations, Rory decided to adopt her as their own. She took the cat a full vet's check-up and introduced her to the writer's lair where she resided with her husband. The calico was much moodier than Sylvia was and she often avoided strangers, but the cats seemed to get along. Their second addition took quickly to Logan and was usually found tucked up underneath his desk while he worked.

They named her Virginia.

The third black cat showed up in the middle of one balmy October. He seemed to have a wry sense of humor and had taken to deliberately crossing their path whenever he saw either Rory or Logan before rubbing himself against their legs. Rory consented to setting out extra food for him and letting him inside the garage when it rained, but would go no further.

"It's a bad omen," Rory insisted when Logan suggested that they add him to their growing menagerie. "Do we really need a black cat crossing our path every single day?"

"We've practically adopted him already," Logan pointed out.

"It's almost Halloween," Rory argued.

"This is ridiculous," Logan replied. "He's friendlier than the other two. He sleeps here, he eats here. I understand if you don't want to do it, but we're already treating him like he's ours."

" _The hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder_ ," Rory quoted aloud, half-heartedly hoping to stump him.

"The cat was the _victim_ in that Poe story," Logan reminded her.

"I hoped you wouldn't catch that one," Rory pouted.

"You think after all of this time I won't catch it when you throw some gothic deep cuts at me? Come on." Logan sighed. "At least think about it, okay?"

Rory agreed to mull it over, but she wasn't convinced.

The cat mysteriously disappeared during Halloween, and didn't reappear for the next couple of day. Rory didn't want to admit it, but she missed him and was worried about him. It didn't make sense: she already had two semi neurotic cats residing in her home. Why did she want to add a third?

Rory finally spotted the cat again on the morning of November 3rd, jumping jubilantly behind their neighbor's Day of the Dead cantrinas (or as she and Logan affectionately referred to them, the "zombie brides", since the skeletons figures were souvenirs of their neighbors' Day of The Dead themed wedding the previous year). He darted out of the way of the tumbling figurines and ran over to greet Rory, looking up at her with a sheepish expression.

Rory turned her head as Logan opened their front door and looked at her expectantly. The black cat wove itself through Rory's legs, lifted its head up, and meowed.

Rory grinned despite herself, and picked him up.

"Fine," she told Logan as she trotted back up towards the house. "I guess we've got our third."

They named him Edgar.


	7. Bowties (Luke and Lorelai, AU)

_Okay, this is my first attempt at writing Luke and Lorelai with children of their own. This is obviously AU, but it's the same AU as the Logan and Rory stories earlier in this series._

 _Variations of this scene have been in my head for a very long time. After the original series ended, I always imagined that Luke and Lorelai would marry and quickly have babies of their own, and that a second set of grandchildren would help Luke and Lorelai to bond with the grandparents in a way they hadn't been able to before. This scene is a glimpse into how that might have taken place._

Lorelai was greeted by her mother on a balmy Friday evening in August with a sadly typical salutation.

"Isn't that dress awfully low cut?"

Lorelai suspected that her good intentions towards her parents this evening were once again not going to end up the way that she had hoped.

"Did Bertha take the night off?" she asked her mother.

"She had a family emergency upstairs," Emily told her. "She'll be right down. Where are Luke and the boys?"

Lorelai handed her mother a small blue bag. "Can you put the boys' bottles in the refrigerator? I'm going to head back to help Luke. They're sleeping."

Emily frowned. "You're still nursing."

Lorelai resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. "Well, Mom, as much as I'd like to insist otherwise, there is a _physical_ reason I'm filling out this dress as well as I am right now."

"Don't be crude, Lorelai," Emily replied. "I just thought you were going to take it a little easier this time, considering the complications from the delivery."

Lorelai felt herself soften. Maybe the life changes over the past couple of years had changed her mother more than she thought.

"I'm fine," Lorelai insisted. "It's been four months. I'm healthy, I'm healing, and I've got a second baby boy who needs just as much attention as the first one did. I've got it handled, Mom."

Emily sighed. "If you say so."

Bertha rushed down the stairs and Emily handed the bag to her. They briefly conversed in Spanish before Bertha turned around and disappeared into the kitchen.

Lorelai grinned as Emily turned her attention back to her daughter. "I've got a surprise for you and Dad tonight. I think you're going to like it. If you'll bring Dad in while I help Luke with the boys –"

"Lorelai, is this really necessary –"

"I promise that you'll appreciate it, Mom," Lorelai said before she scuttled towards the front door. "Just give me two minutes."

Luke and Lorelai stepped into the living room a full five minutes later. Luke carried their one-year-old son in his arms, still drowsy from having fallen asleep in the car. Their youngest child was ensconced in the car seat that Lorelai carried, observing his surrounding with the blue eyes he had inherited from his mother and oldest sister.

It wasn't until Lorelai had reached over to unbuckle the baby from his car seat that Richard noticed the surprise.

"Bowties!" he exclaimed, putting down his glass of scotch. "Look at how dapper they are, Emily."

The elder of the Danes boys lifted his head up from his father's chest, and Emily could see that he and his younger brother were dressed identically in white button-down shirts, black pants, and red bowties.

Right on cue, the toddler began clutching at his shirt collar as the baby started to whimper. Lorelai shifted her youngest child from one side of her chest to the other, hoping to soothe him.

"Wherever did you get these outfits?" Emily asked.

"Lane's boys were dressed up in teeny tiny formal wear when she shot a music video last month," Lorelai explained. "She told me where she found outfits to fit her two and I tracked down ones that were a little smaller for our boys." The baby settled down and she allowed herself to stand still. "The bowties were Luke's idea."

Luke shrugged as Richard looked at him with surprise. "I was half joking. I didn't think they made bowties for babies, but she managed to find some yesterday."

"I think it's marvelous," Richard remarked. "I noticed you didn't join in on the act, Luke."

"A man's got to know his limits," Luke replied as his son gave up on trying to untangle his own shirt collar and reached for Luke's tie. "I think I'll stick with what I usually wear."

"We simply must get some pictures," Emily declared.

"Well, I think you two better hurry up because these guys aren't going to be still for much longer," Lorelai said as she watched her youngest scrunch up his face. "We're good for one or two good shots before they start getting restless."

"I'll hurry," Emily promised as she strolled out of the living room to find someone who could retrieve the camera. "We don't want to miss this."

Luke and Lorelai shared a sly grin as they struggled to balance their squirming children.


	8. Cheeseburger (Luke and April)

_This drabble is in celebration of #NationalCheeseburgerDay. Enjoy!_

Luke looked up as he heard the bells on the diner door jingle and a familiar figure plopped down at her usual stool on the other side of the counter.

"Get boring at home?" he asked his daughter.

"Lorelai's watching the American version of The Returned," April told him dryly. "Rory went to bed early. The entire kitchen stinks of Al's."

Luke grimaced. "I'm making you a cheeseburger," he informed April as he disappeared into the kitchen.

"Put extra jalapenos on it!" April called out to him.

"That doesn't count as a vegetable!" he called back as he heard April giggle in response.

April enjoyed her burger in silence as Luke puttered around the diner, attending to the handful of customers that he had left. He sensed that she wanted to tell him something, but he wasn't sure what it was.

She'd come to him when she needed him. That was the way it has always been between them.

"I know you want to talk to me about something," he prodded her once the diner had emptied out to just the two of them.

"It's just a thought I had," April told him as he cut a slice of apple pie and slid it across the top of the counter to her. "A preliminary thought. It's not something you need to do anything about right away."

Luke paused, curious as to what she wanted.

April sighed. "I was talking to Rory this afternoon. She said that she's decided she's not going back to New York."

"Lorelai's been trying to talk her out of that for a while," Luke said. "She's the only one of us who's dealt with an infant full-time before. She's worried Rory won't be able to handle it by herself."

"That's what I was thinking," April continued. "Women in Rory's situation need a lot of help. Mom and I lived with Grandma until I was almost four. We didn't get our own place until Grandma moved to New New Mexico. And Lorelai stayed with her parents until Rory was nearly two, right?"

Luke nodded. "Right."

"I want for you guys to let Rory put the baby in my room when it comes," April said. "I'm an adult. I've got my own apartment and I've got that research job at school now – I don't need it."

Sometimes Luke felt that if he blinked he wouldn't see the poised, accomplished, seemingly aloof adult woman his daughter had become. It was as if she wouldn't be there at all and he was looking at the thirteen-year-old she had once been with frizzy hair and mismatched clothes, chattering about subjects he didn't understand and trying to find ways to mend his broken heart.

He remembered his words from many years ago.

 _You don't have to take care of me. I'm here to take care of you._

That was still what he was here for.

"I appreciate the offer," Luke told her. "But I don't think it would work out."

"Why not?" April asked.

"Your bedroom is upstairs, next to ours," Luke pointed out. "Rory sleeps on a completely different floor. Lorelai and I want to help, but we don't want the responsibility to fall completely on us, especially in the early days. Rory's likely going to be too tired to keep going up and down the stairs."

"She might not want to put the baby in its room right away," April replied. "I know Aunt Liz didn't do that with Doula. By the time it's ready to go in its own room, it could be almost sleeping through the night."

Luke smiled. "Even if we put all of that aside, that bedroom's still yours, April. We added it to the house specifically for you. It's there so that if you need a place to come home to like Rory does right now, you have it."

April nervously fingered the edges of her napkin. "That's the thing, Dad," she said softly. "Rory always seemed so glamourous to me. Living in New York City, traveling around to all of these other countries, writing for all of these different papers and websites . . . I never knew her as a person, not until the past couple of months. Her life kind of seemed like a dream, you know? And then she ends up back home and her room looks the same way it did when she was a teenager and now she's pregnant and having to depend on you guys again. It's everything I don't want my life to be in ten years."

"I don't think Rory anticipated this either, April," Luke said gingerly.

"It's not just her, Dad," April said, lifting her gaze to meet his own. "There are all these other kids in town who did the same thing. I'm on a doctoral track and you're paying for that. I'll be a lot closer to Rory's age when I finally get out and have to join the real world and I don't know if I want . . . that temptation waiting for me at home if it turns out that I can't hack it."

"I'm paying for you to go to grad school because you're my daughter and you deserve it," Luke told her. "You've accomplished so much because of your hard work, and I want to do everything I can to help you. You're already in the real world, April. What you have now you have because of everything _you_ did."

"But it could come crashing down," April whispered. "I thought Rory had everything figured out and she didn't."

"What's going on with Rory didn't happen because she had a bedroom at her mom's house," Luke said. "I know you know that as well as I do."

April sighed. "I know," she conceded. "She didn't have a plan. And she made bad personal decisions."

"I'm not going to judge Rory for what happened and I wouldn't judge you," Luke told her. "But I can think you can look at her example and figure out how to prevent it."

"I know how to protect myself, Dad," April argued.

"It's not . . . just that," Luke replied, wanting to avoid that area of discussion as much as possible. "I just want you to know that if you get to a place where you feel that you can't handle things and you need some sort of guidance to help you get to where you can figure stuff out, that Lorelai and I are here for you. And that sometimes you're going to need more than money to get you on that path."

April cringed. "That part didn't really help much, did it?"

"I don't know," Luke told her honestly. "I don't know."

"I've got a plan, Dad," April assured him. "I intend to stick it out. It's just what happens after that plan's completed that it gets fuzzy." She twirled the remaining pie crumbs on her platter around with her fork. "I do know not to mess with people who are already in relationships, though. No good can come from that."

"Some might," Luke said, thinking of the light in Rory's eyes as she had showed him her ultrasound picture. No matter how this situation had begun, he knew there was a very human result to it, and one that would need him as much as the person sitting across from him had.

"I didn't mean it like that," April told him. "Rory's actually seems . . . happy about the baby. I guess it's just an adjustment, that's all."

"Rory's going to be okay," Luke told her. "Besides, I'm thinking of another plan that might work out the best for all of us."

The apartment above the diner had been mostly empty for ten years.

It might make a nice home for a new mother and her baby.


	9. Coffee (Lorelai and Rory, AU)

_This drabble is in honor of **#InternationalCoffeeDay** and once again goes into deep AU territory. Enjoy!_

"Do you know what day it is?" Lorelai asked her oldest child on the phone.

Rory blinked her eyes, trying to shake off the fatigue from last night's rushed deadlines and the resulting fatigue. She sighed in gratitude as her husband handed her first cup of coffee of the day. Sweet, sweet liquid energy. She prayed it would start working soon.

"Rory?"

"What day is it?" Rory asked back as she began buttering a slice of toast.

"It's the most glorious of all glorious days," Lorelai declared triumphantly.

"And why is that?" Rory asked as she sat down at the kitchen table.

"I have officially gotten all of the kids off of the boob," Lorelai said with glee. "Nine months of pregnancy, I pop the first son out, thirteen months of breast-feeding, the second son pops out, eleven _more_ months of breast-feeding, and now I'm _done_. I can finally drink as many cups of coffee a day as I want."

"Well, thanks for that information, Mom," Rory replied as she rolled her eyes at Logan. "All of that information. Just out of curiosity, how many cups have you had this morning?"

"Three and a half –"

"Five," Luke grunted in the background.

"I need them," Lorelai claimed. "Especially since –" She let out a shriek of pain.

"Mom? Are you okay?" Rory asked.

"Nothing they tell you about raising little boys prepares you for the exquisite pain of stepping on a Lego," Lorelai sighed. "Anyway, babe, I'll talk to you later. We're going to take advantage of this caffeine high and try to make it to the park by eleven. Love you. Later."

"Later," Rory replied as she hung up the phone.

Logan smiled from the top of his paper. "Mom stuff?"

"She's back on coffee full time," Rory told him.

"Sounds like old times, then," Logan responded as he turned the page.

"Do you ever think about it?" Rory asked after a moment.

"Think about what?"

"Kids," Rory said.

Logan nearly spit out his coffee as he turned to face. "Rory, are you –"

"No," Rory said quickly. "I wouldn't tell you this way if I were."

"I thought we agreed to put that on the back burner for a while," Logan said.

"I'm not looking to change that," Rory assured him. "I mean, we've been married less than a year, and I don't think we're as settled as we need to be if it happened tomorrow, but in the future, I kind of think about it sometimes."

"Like – how far in the future?"

"I don't know," Rory said honestly. "But looking forward, I could see us being ready in two or three years." She took another bite of toast.

"Maybe, huh?"

Rory wiped her mouth. "What do you think?"

"It sounds like a good plan," Logan told her. "I'd like a bigger place before anything like that happens, though. And a lot of different elements have got to fall into place before that happens."

"We've got a bit to go," Rory conceded. "In a lot of different areas."

"We'll get there," Logan promised.

"I think we will," Rory told him as the midmorning sun streamed over the kitchen table.

She drained the last of her first cup of coffee, thinking of new and possible futures.


	10. Boyfriend (Luke and Lorelai)

_Okay, I know it isn't actual canon that Jess had a breakdown in 2012 and had to come home to Stars Hollow and stay in Luke's old apartment (and Luke refused to give him the wi-fi password even though "he lived there", as referenced in AYITL) but in my head it is. So let's take a trip back to 2012 in honor of #NationalBoyfriendDay._

 _This takes place in the normal timeline as speculated by me._

Luke was used to his relationship status being vigorously questioned by his not-quite-in-laws a couple of times a year.

Somehow, it never got any less aggravating.

He was happy how things had ended up. There would always be a part of him that might wonder if he hadn't screwed things up so much when April first came into his life that he might have gotten some of that ideal life that he and Lorelai had envisioned when they first got engaged. He had wanted to put back together the family that he remembered from when he was a kid, the one that had gotten splintered to pieces after his parents died and Liz had taken off with Jess. Life had gotten in the way, and his own worst insecurities and stupid mistakes had gotten the best of him, and it had all gotten broken down too badly. It had to be reassembled piece by painstaking piece, and once it was put together it just didn't look like the image he had in his head.

As tempting as that image had once been, he wouldn't have traded it for the girlfriend and the daughter that he did have. The imaginary couldn't compete with what was real, and he very much appreciated what he knew he did have in his life.

It had been almost five years, and he had thought they were entering the empty nest syndrome of their life. April had graduated from high school the previous spring and was now enrolled at MIT. Her teenage years had been eventful (to put it mildly) but she seemed to be on a good path now, and she still made it to Stars Hollow about every other month or so. Rory had an apartment in Brooklyn, but spent most of her time traveling. He had been ready to enjoy life with just Lorelai when he was faced with yet another unexpected complication.

Jess's book press in Philadelphia had gone under, and he seemed to be at a complete loss. Luke had invited him to come stay at his apartment for a few weeks, figuring that he'd either decline the offer or would grow tired of the sameness of small-town life and make his way back to the city within at least a month. After all, Jess had hated Stars Hollow as a kid: why would it be any different now?

It hadn't worked out that way. Jess had been there for almost three months, sullen and depressed and seemingly lacking the will to want to do anything else. He showed up on time to work in the diner and stayed out of trouble, but Luke was worried. This kind of stasis wasn't like the Jess he had known over the past couple of years, and Luke didn't know quite how hard to push to get him back on track.

For the moment, withholding the diner's wi fi password seemed to be his sole mode of parental restraint. He didn't need for Jess to become an Internet porn addict on his watch on top of everything else.

"Our status isn't changing," Lorelai sharply told her mother.

"Why not?" Emily shot back. "You have all the ingredients for a marriage. You have a home. All of your children are grown and out of the house. It's been four years, Lorelai. What's holding you back at this point?"

Luke and Lorelai shared a worried look across the table. Richard seemed to be ignoring all three of them.

"It's our decision, Emily," Luke said. "We're settled. We're happy. If things change, you'll be one of the first to know."

Lorelai reached out and squeezed his hand under the table.

Later on, they sat curled up on the sofa, neither one of them willing to completely retire for the night. Luke listened to the flames licking the logs in the fireplace and distractedly ran his fingers through Lorelai's curls, wishing that there was some foolproof way to keep that night's argument from continuing to surface again and again.

"You meant it, right?" Lorelai asked softly, jolting him out of his thoughts. "You're okay with how things are? You're happy?"

"Of course," Luke said, turning his head to look her in the eye. "You're happy, right?"

"I am," Lorelai said. "We worked hard for a good thing, Luke. The last thing I want to do is change things."

She settled back against him, and Luke resumed running his fingers through her hair.

"We've got a lot to be grateful for," Luke mused aloud as Lorelai mumbled a sigh of agreement. "Rory's doing good. April's finally happy at school." He chucked to himself. "I mean, there's the depressed nephew holed up above the diner, but other than that . . ."

"He won't be there forever, Luke," Lorelai said. "Things will work out."

"I know," Luke said. "In the end, the rest of it doesn't matter." He cleared his throat. "I'm yours and you're mine, and we're together. I don't think we need anything else."

Lorelai leaned up for a kiss, and let her grateful gaze linger on his as their lips parted. "You're a pretty great boyfriend. You know that, right?"

"I do," Luke said as she settled back against them.

The last snowfall of the winter continued to fall lightly outside their windows, enclosing them inside their own little world.


	11. Maple Syrup (Luke and Lorelai, AU)

_I originally wrote this up as a drabble celebrating **#NationalMapleSyrupDay,** but I liked this concept so much I'm also putting it out there on its own. It may stay a one-shot or it may not: if anyone wants me to continue with it, please let me know._

 _March 1996_

Lorelai Gilmore's journey to becoming an active participant in Stars Hollow town life was a bumpy one.

She stepped off of the bus in Stars Hollow a few months after her eighteenth birthday, freshly divorced and clutching her almost two-year-old daughter by the hand, determined to talk herself into whatever opportunity presented itself to her. She wasn't able to work on her charms on Taylor Doose at the grocery store, or Fran Weston at the bakery, but William Danes at the hardware store gave her directions to the inn at the outskirts of town and an offer to work the counter at his store if things didn't work out. Fortunately, the owner of the inn observed a tenacity and resourcefulness hidden behind the image of the disheveled teenager in front of her, and gave Lorelai a job and a place to stay.

Lorelai hadn't intended to stay in the potting shed as long as she did. Her parents knew where she was staying, and often pleaded with her to return to the original plan they had lain out once Lorelai's ill-fated marriage had reached its inevitable conclusion: they would raise Rory while Lorelai went to college, and once Lorelai had graduated and was earning enough money to support herself, Rory could then resume living with her mother. Lorelai declined every time: she was determined to make her own way in the world with her daughter by her side, and if that meant patching together Rory's clothes from donated scraps and subsisting on leftovers from the kitchen while living in a place that was designed to stock garden tools, she would do it. She had tried to do what her parents thought best, and it had blown up in her face in the exact manner she had suspected it would. She was going to do the rest of it on her own, and someday they would move from this temporary home to a permanent one.

Lorelai worked her way up to the head of housekeeping and was promoted to working the front desk right as Rory entered kindergarten. Mia protested the two of them leaving their shoddy but cozy little nest, but Lorelai knew it was the right time. She and Rory had outgrown the shed, and it was time for them to move forth in the world. They moved to a one-bedroom apartment where Lorelai set up a room for Rory and pulled out her bed every night from the sofa in the living room: a year later, they upgraded to a two-bedroom apartment where they could both have their own room. Lorelai became assistant manager of the inn two years after that, and they moved to a rental house not far from the inn. The money Lorelai saved on gas money went a long way towards sustaining the life she had built for them: even as hard as she had worked to make a good life for the two of them, far too often the bills seemed to overwhelm them, and that elusive dream of a home of their own still seemed like a fantasy most of the time.

Throughout it all, Lorelai's involvement in the life of the town was often sporadic at best. She knew that her choice to move away from the inn probably cost her a lot in terms of money and energy: even if the end result was a more normal life for Rory, sometimes she lacked the reserves to participate in that life alongside her. Rory was enrolled in dance classes and Girl Scouts and often took center stage in town festivals and pageants, but Lorelai only participated occasionally. There were seasons when she would be the center of it all, but sometimes those faded away under the din of bills and responsibilities and her diminishing ability to have energy for much of anything else.

Lorelai became manager of the inn the year Rory finished fourth grade, and at last things seemed to be looking up for them financially. She had earned a moment to finally _breathe_ and appreciate what she had worked for, and she used that moment to plunge forth into becoming the Stars Hollow denizen she wanted to be. She and Rory went to town meetings every week. Having long supplemented her income by doing dressmaking on the side, she started making the outfits for the festivals and elementary school pageants. They started eating out more, and they ended up eating half of their meals at the diner that had recently replaced the hardware store. The gruff diner owner repeatedly resisted her attempts to flirt and needle him, and Lorelai took it as a new daily challenge while Rory rolled her eyes next to her.

Then a slightly worn-down two-story house came up for sale near the center of town, and Lorelai realized that her dreams of homeownership were no longer a fantasy. She could do this. After so many years of working towards this goal, she could have it: a real home for herself and for Rory, one that she owned and that she could call theirs at last. Lorelai moved herself and Rory in and fell into her old patterns while she focused on fixing the house up and managing her mortgage payments. Town life became something the loomed on the periphery of her attentions, and she knew it would be a while before she was able to return to it.

Things had changed a lot by the time she was able to make it back.

Lorelai and Rory walked into the diner one night after not having been there in almost a week: they had slowly worked their way back to eating their meals in town, but it wasn't yet a daily occurrence. Lorelai felt a bit dismayed when she didn't see Luke behind the counter, but her mood brightened when she saw him nestled in her usual table near the window. Luke wasn't dining alone: his companion was a pigtailed toddler in a booster seat, covered up in maple syrup to her elbows.

Luke was also covered up to maple syrup to his elbows, of course.

Lorelai strolled up to the table, a hint of mischief in her eyes.

"Take a seat anywhere," Luke told her, focusing on cleaning up the toddler's face.

"I _want_ to sit here," Lorelai whined.

"Anywhere else," Luke said. He let his eyes meet hers. "I hate when you do that," he told her.

"But who else is going to help you out with baby-sitting duty?" Lorelai asked.

" _Mom_ ," Rory implored, clearly embarrassed.

"This isn't baby-sitting duty," Luke said roughly. "She's mine."

"Luke has a _daughter_?" Lorelai said, shocked. She turned to Rory. "Did you know that Luke had a daughter?"

Rory shrugged. "Kind of."

The little girl looked up at Lorelai with generous brown eyes and lifted up her spoon. "Pancakes?" she asked.

Lorelai smiled, remembering Rory when she was two or three, her eyes shining as she plunged into a rare treat of ice cream. She had looked just like this.

"I think I would like some," she told Luke's daughter. "But your daddy usually doesn't serve breakfast after eleven AM."

The toddler turned her head to Luke's. "Pancakes," she repeated.

"This isn't a Denny's," Luke argued.

"What's good for the kid is good for Rory and me," Lorelai replied.

Luke groaned, clearly sensing he was not going to be able to talk Lorelai out of this. "Fine," he agreed. He waved one of his waitresses over and whispered in her ear before she disappeared behind the counter.

"Luke can never resist my powers of persuasion," Lorelai bragged as she and Rory pulled out chairs to the table and sat down.

"That or he's learned it's better not to begin fighting it," Rory said.

"It's the second one," Luke told them as he watched his daughter cut into her remaining pancakes with her plastic spoon. He looked up. "I notice you didn't ask before you invited yourself to this meal," he remarked dryly.

"I want to know more about this little one," Lorelai said, gesturing to the girl, whose face was once again smeared in maple syrup. "What's your name, sweetie?"

"Abril," said the little girl, still struggling to swallow her bite of food.

"It's nice to meet you, April," Lorelai said, marveling at this new aspect of Luke as he reached out to wipe her face again. "How old is she?" she asked.

"She'll be three next month," Luke said.

"You're not married," Lorelai remarked, turning her gaze to his ring finger. At least that hadn't changed the last time she had looked. She tried to remember to back when she and Rory first started visiting the diner, and she hadn't noticed a ring on his finger at that point, either.

Luke turned his gaze up to meet hers, steeling his intense blue stare on her. "Neither are you," he remarked.

Clearly Lorelai hadn't been the only person who was observing the lack of a ring on the other's finger.

She let that thought quickly slip to the back of her mind.

"I tried," she protested. "I was married to Rory's father for all of seven months." She let out a deep sigh as the waitress brought both her and Rory fresh cups of coffee, and brought the steaming mug to her lips for a sigh. "Wasn't really for us."

Luke looked up from where he was cutting up the scrambled eggs that the waitress had just brought to him.

"I want ketchup on my eggs, Daddy," April said.

Luke looked over to April's plate, which contained about three remaining bites of pancake. "One more bite," he told his daughter.

April frowned and slowly fumbled with the spoon in front of her before giving up and picking up the pancake with her hands. Luke sighed and reached out to attempt to clean her hands again before squirting ketchup on the eggs and passing them over along with a fresh spoon.

"What happened?" he asked Lorelai.

Lorelai shrugged. "We were just kids," she explained. "We had to become adults all of a sudden, and we found out that we didn't really belong together as adults. I knew all along it was a bad idea, but I let our parents talk us into it." She sighed and took another sip of coffee. "I'm glad it happened, though. If we hadn't tried that early and failed, we would have kept prolonging it and that wouldn't have been good for any of us." She turned to look at Rory, who was absorbed in a book. "Especially her."

"Does Rory still see her dad?" Luke asked, keeping one eye trained on April as he attempted to eat his own plate of eggs.

"He lives in California," Rory said, not looking up from her book.

"He's remarried and has another daughter," Lorelai told Luke. "She goes there during the summer and holidays." She raised an eyebrow at Luke, who was wiping ketchup off of April's mouth. "What about you?"

"I didn't really try that," Luke said as he put the soiled napkin down and pulled an extra few from the dispenser. "I lived with April's mother for a year. After that, we split her up between us until about six months ago. She's been with me since then."

"Oh," Lorelai said, wondering if she was poking at a recent emotional scab with this line of inquiry. "So you're a full-time dad, then?"

"I guess you could say that," Luke said as he let his gaze meet Lorelai's. "Nothing really _tragic_ happened," he clarified. "April's mother, she's older, she's a professor at UConn –" he shrugged. 'We weren't together long before April came along. We didn't have a lot in common. April's grandmother has Parkinson's, Anna's having to take a lot of time to take care of her – it just wasn't a good environment for April to be in. She was staying with me most of the time anyway. Anna comes and takes April out to do something about twice a month."

"I just think it's odd I haven't seen you with her until now," Lorelai said softly. "I mean, you had this really important part of your life that everyone else knew about but me. I didn't really see you as the dad type, I guess."

"Me, neither," Luke said as he gazed adoringly at April clumsily spooning a bite of egg into her mouth. "I can't really imagine what it was like before at this point, though."

Lorelai looked at the two of them, her heart again sent aflutter at seeing Luke in this whole new light.

She cleared her throat, and Luke turned his gaze back to her.

"Can I just suggest something, one single parent to another?" Lorelai asked.

"Sure," Luke said uncertainly.

"I know for a long time I was by myself, trying to do everything by myself because I didn't want to ask for help," Lorelai said. "This town was there for me when I needed it, but there's always been times when I kind of retreated because I was too tired or overwhelmed or maybe too focused on this one goal to really rely on them. Even recently. But I know you're in this situation too, and if you need some advice, or someone to complain to, or just someone to come over and help, I want you to feel free to call me and ask. I don't want to be the only one kept out of this part of your life. Especially when I think I might understand it more than a lot of other people would."

"I think I'm doing okay most of the time," Luke told her. "But I'll keep it in mind."

Lorelai smiled. "Good."

She took in a deep breath as food was placed in front of her and Rory, grateful for the prospect of new beginnings.


	12. Snakes (Rory and Logan)

_This comes by request for a Rogan oneshot about snakes. I'm not really good at writing young Rogan, so I fast-forwarded them to the present day._

 _This is AU in my head, but there's technically nothing in here that deviates from canon. So read, enjoy, and let me know what you think._

Rory was used to Colin, Robert, and Finn dropping in to wreak havoc in her life.

They were part of that wild spontaneity that she always associated with Logan, and even though things had calmed down for both of them now, she still welcomed it when it came rearing up on them. You could embrace responsibility, coupledom, even family life and still want to let loose that side of you that relished in not knowing what came next. Maybe it only bubbled up at odd moments, but she didn't want to let go of it completely. At least as long as she could control the other parts of her life.

Well, most of the time. Adult life had its own way of forcing you to face the unexpected.

However, she wasn't expecting to walk downstairs on Sunday morning to see Finn gleefully clutching two giant snakes while Robert and Colin tried to wrestle a third one back into the cage.

Rory shrieked as her coffee cup hit the floor and scattered into a million pieces while the steaming liquid splattered onto the linoleum.

"You're going to scare them," Colin remarked as he fastened the latch to the cage, having finally coaxed the snake back into the cage

Rory opened her mouth to retort back just as she heard Logan run down the stairs and skitter onto the floor, nearly slipping on the spilled coffee.

"Rory? What is it? You're going to wake – "

"I can't handle snakes," Rory insisted.

Logan straightened up and noticed his friends and their new legless companions grinning gleefully in the living room.

"I know I shouldn't have given you guys a key," he remarked. He nodded at Colin and Robert and gestured towards the mess on the kitchen floor. "Do me a favor and clean that up, will you?" He led Rory to the leather couch in the living room and sat down beside her.

"Why are there snakes in my living room, guys?" Logan asked. "And why is only one of them caged up right now while the other two are in a position to terrify my wife and daughter?"

"They're on loan from that old school goth professor Finn is seeing at Syracuse," Robert explained as he crossed the living room and handed a fresh cup of coffee to Rory.

"Syracuse is four hours away," Rory said as she took in another sip of coffee. "Shouldn't they be resting back at the university, munching on diseased rodents or something?"

"We're taking them to that exhibit at Prospect Park," Finn said cheerfully. "Julie's going to meet us there. We thought we'd drop in, show them to the wee one, let her have a proper Australian play date – "

"That isn't going to happen," Rory said forcefully, maternal anger steeling itself into her voice.

"She loves the park! She loved Australia last summer!" Finn objected.

"This isn't the time or the place," Logan told him. "What kind of snakes are those? I don't even know if – "

"They're harmless," Colin said as he returned from the kitchen. "It's a milk snake and a pair of rat snakes. They only eat birds and small animals."

"Technically, the milk snake also eats other snakes," Robert said.

"I don't want mostly vegetarian snakes in my house," Rory retorted. "I don't want _any_ snakes here."

"It's going to be okay, Rory," Logan said as he rubbed her shoulder. "They're going to put the snakes back in the cages and then they're going to get out of here and meet us at the park in a couple of hours." He looked up to make eye contact with his friends. "Right?"

"Right," Finn said faintly. "We can bring booze into the park, right?" he whispered to Colin.

"You guys don't understand," Rory said softly. "I grew up in a garden shed. You know what likes to hang out around a garden shed? Snakes. And worms. And sometimes garden slugs. I can't stand anything without legs. Except for amputees, I guess. My mom can't either. We _hate_ snakes. It's a genetic thing. That's why you guys have to get it out of here before the kid wakes up because she's going to freak out just like I did."

Just at that moment, they heard the sound of small feet coming down the stairs.

"Uncle Finn?"

Rory and Logan stiffened as their daughter trotted across the living room in a mess of unruly blond curls and rumpled pajamas, lifting up her sleepy blue eyes to the reptiles draped across Finn's shoulders.

"Mama! Daddy! Snakes!"

She didn't seem the least bit terrified.

"Can I touch it?" she asked as Logan and Rory rose to stand at her side, quick to protect her from any sudden moves from Finn's new friends.

Finn raised his eyebrows and cackled in triumph as Logan shot him a warning look.

Apparently this particular fear hadn't been passed down to the next generation after all.


	13. Hats (Luke and Lorelai)

_This particular drabble is in celebration of # **NationalHatDay** , and it is sticking completely to canon._

The truth was that Luke did lose his black hat.

It had never felt quite as right as the blue one, but he had gotten used to it. He was a man who liked his routines and his set ways of life: when things spun out of his control, his first instinct was to lash out. What had been usually been limited to occasional short-tempered rants now threatened to be a storm that would drown out everyone he knew when the catalyst had been Lorelai's betrayal. Or at least Luke thought that's how it _should_ have been.

Maybe it took the most devastating blow to extinguish the rage out of him. Maybe it was that he was now responsible for a smaller, more vulnerable person besides himself, and he knew that he couldn't give him in to his temptations now that he had April in his life. Maybe none of that mattered anymore, and he was just tired. He had spent years fighting against the pull Christopher and his way of life had had on Lorelai, and it had ended up exactly the way he had feared. He didn't have it in him to fight anymore. He had to move on.

There would come a point when he would allow himself to think about his part in what had gone wrong, but he couldn't allow himself to go there right now. He needed to be a good man for April and Liz and Lane and whoever else needed him, and he couldn't do that and allow himself to ponder the why of what had just happened. So the blue hat went back on the shelf along with the reminder of what had broken his heart. He chose to focus on the good things still in his life and tried to ignore what was missing.

It was almost a full year later when Luke woke up one morning and realized that he had lost his hat sometime in the previous night. He had gone home from telling Lorelai about the plans he had made to fix up her old Jeep, performed a last-minute fix to his ailing dishwasher, taken a late-night call from Jess, tried to watch a little hockey on television (it still wasn't his thing, despite Jess having taken a sudden interest in the sport), and . . . he couldn't remember anything else. The hat had gotten lost somewhere in there, and he needed a replacement right away.

He opened his closet, looked at the assortment of baseball caps gathered on the top shelf, and almost hesitated before he grabbed the once beloved blue hat. Once it had meant something painful to him, a reminder of everything that he wanted and couldn't have. Now he knew that it wasn't as simple as it had seemed on that humid May morning when it had all come crashing down. He and Lorelai had both failed and betrayed each other in very different ways. And yet somehow they had found a way to forgive each other for what had happened and to remain in each other's lives. He now knew that nothing else would ever seem truly right unless he had her presence – and at the very least, her friendship - as a constant force in his life.

He had affirmed to her a long time ago that he would always be there for her, no matter what else happened. Now after everything else had happened, he knew how true that long-ago promise really was. He belonged as a constant in her life, and the pain they had inflicted on each other no longer hurt like it used to.

Maybe there still remained a possibility of putting things back the way they should have been. He didn't quite allow himself to hope for that at this point, but he was ready to start contemplating the possibility.

He put the blue hat back on his head.

His hopes ebbed and flowed over the next couple of weeks. He had truly believed that Lorelai was conveying that she still wanted him during her karaoke moment, only to have his hopes cruelly deflate when he heard her deny it the next morning. He had allowed himself to believe that it wouldn't go further, but he had still wanted to usher Rory out into the world in the manner that she deserved. Luke knew that no matter what else was going on between the two of them that Lorelai would be hurting when Rory left, and he could never stand to see her unhappy. Even with the entirety of his being had screamed at him that he should hate and resent her for hurting him, he still hadn't wanted her to see her that way.

Even while all of these thwarted possibilities were being weighed in his mind, he never even once thought of taking the hat off of his head. Lorelai belonged in his life, and he belonged in hers. The love and desire that he felt for her wasn't going away. He knew that for certain now.

The hat was staying on.

It wasn't until many months later – long after the kiss after Rory's going away party that solidified Lorelai's full presence in his life – that he learned that she had believed that he had put on the hat as a romantic gesture. That her subsequent serenade had been its own gesture of sorts, a tentative move forward in the dance between them to move them one step closer to where they needed to be.

"I thought you weren't ready," she had confessed as she lay beside him on his boat under a cloudless night sky, their only company the water that gently splashed against the borders of their small refuge. "I thought I had read into something that didn't exist. So I had to pretend it didn't exist for me." She looked at him directly, her eyes boring into his, that same hue of midnight blue that reflected the hat perched on his head. "But it did."

Luke wished it had been a direct gesture meant to court her. Maybe it would been easier to draw her out that way instead of letting his doubts place once more barrier between the happiness that they could only find with each other. He wanted to be built that way. But he wasn't.

He wasn't built for eloquent speeches or bold declarations of love. He wasn't built for gestures you could easily interpret. He could put his intent into concrete action, but the words, the romantic signifiers . . . that was often beyond him. He had long ago made peace with that.

His heart beat steadily for her, just as it had for the past ten years. That's what he was built for.

"I'm ready," he told her as he smoothed the hair away from her face. "I'm ready for whatever you are."


	14. Valentines Day 2019 (Luke and Lorelai)

_Here's a little sliver of a drabble to celebrate Valentines Day 2019 with Luke and Lorelai._

 _I originally was going to make this longer and kind of delve into some of the issues with the kids and how I see their lives at this point in time. I may continue this story in another drabble, but I wanted to get this out before Valentines Day officially ended (at least in the continental U.S) and give myself the opportunity to write something since I haven't put anything out there in a couple of weeks._

 _I kind of wanted to give a shout-out to the inspiration for this story in the wonderful Doug and Carol ER fanfiction series that was written almost twenty years ago and I recently rediscovered on AO3, which used the concept of the stained glass window to much better effect than this little story could ever hope for. If you are at all interested in that ancient pairing, I very much recommend those stories._

Luke and Lorelai's second Valentines Day as a married couple started in the usual way.

It was usually their tradition to spend the holiday at home, but this year they had departed for Luke's cabin on the lake to spend a few days by themselves before the rest of the family joined them on Sunday. It was a beloved, time-honored tradition between the two of them to devote this day to each other to celebrate with their own brand of fanfare. Their adult children knew to stay very far away from them during this time.

Lorelai was expecting much of the same this year. There was a time for grand gestures and outward celebrations, but it wasn't on this day. Luke put his own quiet, understated devotion into it, and it was generally understood that this was what both of them wanted.

At this point, as a grandmother whose fiftieth birthday had come and gone who was entering into the twelfth year of her relationship with Luke, Lorelai was grateful for this. There was something to be said for knowing where you belonged and who you belonged to and knowing that there was peace in that realization.

Still, Luke crackled with an uncharacteristic nervous energy on the drive up to the cabin, and Lorelai felt a little anxious at what exactly he had planned this year.

She didn't want glitz and glamour or grand romantic gestures. She had known that once, and they had turned out to be rotten, hollow promises that had betrayed her almost as soon as they were offered. That wasn't what her husband gave to her or what either of them cherished. Every single one of his grand gestures had been something practical yet carefully chosen to give her what she needed most at the time: the chuppah, the Santa burger, the ice-skating rink, the impassioned speech of devotion the second time she proposed to him. She didn't need anything different.

Luke's present this year was hidden at the back of the house, right across from the small bay window where Lorelai often relaxed on lazy mornings with a view of the pier behind their house. The stained-glass window was almost a mirror image of the small picture they kept on their bedroom wall, of their two hands closely intertwined, the light radiating off of their wedding rings. The fading afternoon light cast an ethereal illumination across their faces as Lorelai's gaze met her husband's.

Tears in her eyes, Lorelai took his hand in hers and led him to the bedroom as they retraced the familiar maps of each other's bodies. Sometimes the fanfare between the two of them was something that built to a crescendo before it exploded. Sometimes it was a quiet melody that only the two of them understood.

Lorelai was more than happy to have a few days with her man to practice the delights of both of them.


	15. V-Day 2019, Part II (Luke and Lorelai)

_This is a continuation of the last drabble, in which we receive a lengthy update on the present state of events with Rory, Jess, Logan, and April as they live inside my head._

 _I've also posted this and the previous drabble as a stand-alone story._

 _Enjoy!_

It's _cold_ out there," Rory declared as she closed the door to the patio behind her. She set her squirming son down on the kitchen tiles and adroitly removed his coat and mittens.

"Paul An-ka!" Rick shrieked before taking off for the corner of the den where the elderly dog lay next to where Jess's girlfriend was sprawled on the floor.

"Jessica, watch him around the dog, will you?" Lorelai called out from the kitchen table where she was nursing her cup of coffee.

"Will do," Jessica proclaimed as she reached out to tickle Rick before he could sit on the dog's face.

"I know I said that I was looking forward to getting out of Manhattan for a weekend and chasing my kid around somewhere that wasn't my living room, but I wasn't prepared for what it would feel like to stand there in the solid cold for an hour," Rory proclaimed as she fixed herself a fresh cup of coffee. "I'm not even sure it helps that he doesn't really understand the concept of a snowball yet. Trust me, boyfriend and son teaming up to pelt you with those flakes for twenty minutes straight? Not the fun I was looking for." She paused to take a breath and removed her own scarf and coat, placing them next to her gloves on the empty chair next to Lorelai's.

"Is he still out there?" Lorelai asked.

"He's helping Luke cook back by the pier," Rory replied as she sat down in the remaining kitchen chair. "Did the two of you really think this BBQ out in the snow thing out ahead of time?"

"My husband is very adventurous," Lorelai proclaimed, her eyes full of mischief.

Rory groaned.

"I didn't even offer up anything interesting," Lorelai protested.

"Offspring #2 can hear you, too," April called out from where she was seated next to Jess on the sofa.

Rory bit her lip. "I actually have to talk to you about something in private," she told Lorelai.

"You're allowed to spill salacious details and I'm not?" Lorelai retorted.

"Not that," Rory said, rolling her eyes. "It's something a little more . . . serious."

Lorelai's stomach did a series of mocking flip-flops as she pondered the implications of that, and was reminded of a morning a little over two years ago when Rory had revealed her last life-changing development.

It couldn't be that again . . . could it? Unless it was something far more sinister. How had she made it this far with barely anyone in her family being beset by sudden catastrophic illness anyway –

Lorelai shut that thought down. She smiled weakly at Rory.

"Let's go into the other room and talk," she suggested.

Rory nodded. "Hey, Twin Jesses –"

Jessica looked up from the corner of the living room and shot Jess a look of admonishment.

"I told you not to use that that nickname," Jess told Rory.

"-Keep an eye on Rick for a couple of minutes, okay?" Rory continued, clearly ignoring him.

"She does that just to annoy me," Jess whispered to April.

"Long as it works," April replied, turning her attention back to her phone.

Jess shook his head as he picked up a tub of blocks from the side of the sofa. He knelt down on the floor beside Jessica and Rick before spilling them out for the three of them to assemble together.

Lorelai followed Rory into the guest bedroom, trying to keep her fears from rising to the surface.

* * *

"What's going on, Rory?" Lorelai asked as she sat down on the bed beside her daughter. "Are you sick? Is Rick sick? Are you preg –"

"Okay, stop," Rory insisted. "It's nothing like that. Mom, we're fine."

"Then why the need to hide this conversation away from April and Jess squared?"

"I just – I had something come up recently and I didn't want to talk about it in front of someone I was dating a year ago and his live -in girlfriend," Rory explained.

"And you're not – "

"No, I'm not pregnant," Rory clarified. "We've had that conversation several times, Mom. It's not that."

"Then what is it?" Lorelai asked, a hint of anxiousness still remaining in her voice.

Rory sighed. "It's just – Okay, I need a moment to explain this right."

Lorelai forced herself to remain silent. Now she was mostly curious about what the big problem was.

"This was the first Valentines Day that Logan and I spent as a couple," Rory began. "I mean, we were together before, but not _together_ together, and I wasn't selfish enough to insist on spending that holiday with him when he was with Odette. It was different when we were younger – I have that one really awful memory of that double date up on the Vineyard, and he was in London the next year. So this was the first occasion to really celebrate this the right way. And Honor said she'd keep Rick overnight, so that put more pressure on the two of us to make this special. Or at least I thought it did."

Lorelai cringed. "Are you going to tell me that Logan actually forgot?"

"Of course he didn't forget," Rory replied, half-offended. "You know Logan – he loves these huge romantic gestures. We went to this nice little Italian bistro in Queens, he got me this gorgeous bracelet, we had a nice night in a hotel all to ourselves, but – "

Lorelai shrugged her shoulders, wondering what the punchline was.

"I was expecting him to propose," Rory said quietly. "And when it didn't happen, I was actually relieved."

Lorelai smiled slightly. "Did he give you any hints that he was planning something like that?"

"No," Rory said. "We haven't even talked about it."

"You've only been living with him for three months," Lorelai pointed out.

"I know," Rory said. "But I'm sick of – I'm sick of having to explain myself."

"Explain yourself – "

"I'm unmarried, he's unmarried," Rory continued. "We're in a relationship. We live together. We have a child. Everyone expects us to get married. Everyone at my work, at his work, his family, Grandma – "

"Okay, stop right there for a minute," Lorelai said. "Forget about what everyone else thinks. Do you want to get married?"

"I don't know!" Rory cried out. "I was coming around to the idea because it seemed like the next logical step. But when it didn't happen, I realized that maybe I didn't want it. And I felt really ashamed. Because it would make everything easier."

"Marriage for the sake of marriage doesn't make things easier," Lorelai stated baldly. "I would know that more than anyone, Rory."

Rory sighed. "Look, Mom, I know that it worked out for you and Luke to delay things for as long as you needed to. I know that the two of you were really happy that way. But I don't want to wait ten years. I don't want to wake up one day and realize that I've missed out on my chance to have another baby."

Lorelai took a deep breath. "Look, Rory, the life Luke and I lived for a long time – I don't regret any of it."

"I know you don't," Rory said.

"Luke knew I didn't want to get married right away, and neither of us made having kids a priority," Lorelai said. "I know I'm not the greatest relationship example in the world, kid, but what I have learned is that it's important to figure out what you want and talk about it with the other person. I've learned the hard way how very, very important that is."

"It's just – I don't really know what I want at this point," Rory said, sounding dejected. "I love Logan. I do. I just don't want to disappoint him. And I know I don't have that much time to figure it out."

"Do you want to have another baby?" Lorelai asked softly.

"Not in the next five minutes," Rory clarified. "But eventually? Yes. I'm turning thirty-five this year. Eventually kind of has a stopping point in that department."

"Rory, you need to talk to Logan about this," Lorelai insisted. "You can't just leave it up to him, or make decisions on the assumption that he'll feel a certain way. But I don't want you to end up doing something just because it will make things easier. That's just going to make all three of you miserable."

"I know," Rory said, staring at her hands. "That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid." She looked back up at Lorelai. "Mom, when he did ask me before, you said that I'd know for sure the next time someone asked me to marry them. What does it mean if I don't?"

"Oh, Rory," Lorelai replied, feeing a mixture of shame and regret come over her. "Sweetie, that was a long time ago."

"I don't regret telling Logan no the first time," Rory said. "But what does it mean if I didn't want to say yes this time, either?"

"It means that you're not ready," Lorelai said. "It doesn't mean that you should give up on the other person if you still want to be with them. Logan didn't give you a choice last time, remember?"

"It's a lot more complicated this time around," Rory said softly.

"That's my point," Lorelai told her daughter. "You know, Rory, all those years ago when I told you that you'd know right away – I was trying to make you feel better about what had happened. I know that you did the right thing. But I was still really mixed up about Luke at that point, too. I wanted him to make a move, to be the person to put our relationship back together, and when he didn't do it – I thought that maybe it just wasn't possible. That's part of why I told you what I did. But Luke was unsure about me as well, and many very difficult conversations later after we got back together, I realized there was never going to be any magical moment when I knew how things should work. It's always more complicated than that."

Rory sighed. "It was a lot easier when I just thought everything depended on a yes or a no."

"I thought that, too," Lorelai told her daughter. "But the things worth fighting for are usually never that simple.

Rory nodded as she turned her head to look out the window, seemingly wishing that the answers lay somewhere in the elements beginning to rage outside the cabin.

* * *

"Why did you and Lorelai wait so long to get married?"

Luke looked up from the grill and shifted his gaze to Logan, stunned by the recent shift in conversation from baseball and work to more personal matters.

"Wha –"

"Look, if it's too personal, I understand," Logan said, taking a sip of his beer. "I was just curious."

" _Curious_ ," Luke repeated suspiciously.

"I guess I'm trying to get a feel for Rory's view of the situation since the last time I broached the topic with her," Logan clarified.

"If this is some sort of way of asking for her hand in marriage, this is a really strange place to be bringing it up," Luke said sharply.

"It's not," Logan assured him before taking another swig of his beer. "I tried that before. It didn't exactly work out."

"Did you talk to her about it?" Luke asked.

"No," Logan admitted. "I'm planning on it, I just – "he shrugged. "I just want to know how much things may have changed in Rory's head."

Luke sighed and returned his attention to the grill. "I can't help you out much there," he said to Logan. "Lorelai and I have made it clear to our daughters that we don't really want them to follow our example. You need to ask Rory about what she thinks about it."

"Your example is worth emulating, though," Logan pointed out. "And you didn't get there entirely through marriage. That's just what I'm curious about."

Luke shrugged. "I think what worked for me and Lorelai is fairly unique," he told the younger man. "We'd tried before and failed. We knew what had gone wrong. I think you can understand some element of that, can't you?"

"I can," Logan said.

"I listened to what Lorelai wanted," Luke told Logan firmly. "And I tried my best to make her happy. I expect you to do the same. Does that tell you what you need to know?"

"I'm not sure it – "

"Talk to Rory," Luke said again. "That's the most important part. Do you understand me?"

Logan nodded, realizing he's reached the limits of what Luke would tolerate when it came to Rory. The part of Luke that sought to protect Rory in all circumstances only reared its ugly head every now and then, but Logan knew from experience to tread carefully when it focused its attention on him.

Besides, Luke was right. Logan had spent most of the past couple of weeks dancing around the subject in his own mind, afraid to confront the subject with Rory out of fear that she would close herself off to him. The battle between what everyone else wanted and what he was capable of had been one that had been an ever-present struggle in his life as long as he could remember. Rory had been caught up in his inability to manage those two things far more than he had wanted, and he wasn't looking forward to entangling her in another one of those struggles.

They may have managed to figure out how to care for a kid together in a relatively short period of time, but sustaining a relationship was something altogether different.

"I understand," Logan told Luke. "Believe me, I do."

* * *

"Rory and I had an interesting conversation this afternoon," Lorelai said that evening as she and Luke were preparing for bed.

"What about?" Luke asked as he turned out to the light in the bathroom and walked over to his side of the bed.

" _Marriage_ ," Lorelai said, a hint of teasing in her voice.

"Oh, that," Luke said neutrally as he crawled underneath the covers, refusing to take the bait.

"Really?" Lorelai asked as she curled up underneath the covers of her side of the bed. "That's all you're going to say?"

"I mean . . . what reaction am I supposed to have?" Luke asked.

"Where's that quasi-threatening stepfatherly concern you usually display when it comes to Rory?" Lorelai asked.

"Rory's an adult," Luke argued. This was his standard retort when it came to Rory's increasingly complicated love life.

"That's what you always – "Lorelai paused, and saw the slight grin that appeared on his face. "You know something."

"Maybe," Luke replied unemotionally.

"Rory was going on and on about how she was expecting him to propose on Valentines Day and she wasn't ready yet! Is Logan just biding his time on this?"

Luke scoffed. "I don't think so."

"Well, you obviously talked to him about _something_ ," Lorelai surmised.

"I don't know, Lorelai . . ." Luke replied. 'He had a lot of questions about us, about why we waited."

"You mean why you waited," Lorelai corrected him, settling next to him and curling her arms up underneath her pillow.

"I told him to talk to Rory," Luke stated. "That he should listen to her, and follow through with what she wants." He turned his head to look at Lorelai solemnly. "You don't think he just intends to hold off forever, do you?"

Lorelai reached out for his hand. "Is that what you think I did?"

"It didn't matter to me, Lorelai," Luke insisted. "I knew what you wanted. I knew you weren't ready. I just wanted to be with you. I would have waited as long as you wanted. It didn't make a difference to me. I was always going to be here."

"I know," Lorelai told him, her azure gaze meeting his in understanding. "I know."

They lapsed into content silence.

"What did you tell Rory?" Luke asked after a few moments.

Lorelai sighed. "I told her to talk to Logan about how she feels," she said. "The thing is, Luke, is that I get the impression with her that ever since the baby came along, she's looking for the least painful solution to anything that happens. I worry that she'll agree to something not because it's what she wants to do, but because it's what makes it easier for everyone else." She shook her head. "I hate to admit it, but Rory could never have done what I did."

Luke's brow furrowed "What you did – "

"Leaving home like I did," Lorelai clarified. "Raising her by myself for all of those years. I know she held off on starting a relationship with Logan once this motherhood business presented itself, but even then, that was the easiest decision for her because she didn't know how she felt about him. I don't want her to get talked into making a decision she shouldn't be making."

"She knows she can come home if things don't work out," Luke assured her. "She's lived on her own with Rick, too. Rory knows how to handle this, Lorelai. Things will turn out okay."

"I know you're right," Lorelai said. "It's just my mind gets in mom mode and goes on overdrive – "She paused to look him in the eye. "You know, this is the first time in a long time that we've had anything resembling a problem with the kids. And it isn't really a problem! My daughter isn't ready to get married and it looks like her boyfriend isn't either. This is seriously low-key drama."

"It's not – "Luke began, and then stopped himself. "We had a couple of peaceful years before your dad died. April was in college, Jess got settled back in Philadelphia, Rory seemed to be doing okay – "

"And then it got mixed around again," Lorelai pointed out. "But now we're in for a season of peace. Maybe."

She moved her head closer to his, suddenly changing the subject. "I loved the window, Luke."

Luke chortled. "I believe you spent the past couple of days expressing your gratitude," he told her, reaching out with his other hand to run his fingers through her curls. "Next year I'm expanding that bay window for you. Maybe I can put another one of those stained-glass things in there, too."

"I don't think we have room for that, with all these extra people coming in and out of this place," Lorelai remarked, her eyes dancing.

"I want you to have something of your own," Luke told her.

Her heart beat with gratitude and intensity as she moved her body closer to his.

"I do have something of my own," Lorelai replied as she leaned in to kiss him.

The snow lightly battered the windows outside as she pulled him deeper into their own private cocoon.

* * *

The next morning's expected snow showers delayed the return of most of the Gilmore-Danes progeny to their usual abodes by late afternoon. Lorelai was glad for it, despite the extra time she knew it would take for her and Luke to get home themselves. She guessed that part of it was the way that her thoughts had shifted gradually into grandmother mode, but it wasn't often that she had the opportunity to get all the kids together in the same place. Just a few short years ago, she would have been aghast at becoming that kind of person, but it didn't faze her at this point.

This was who she was now – a grandmother, a wife, a den mother of sorts to a brood of adult children, only one of which was biologically hers. She was more than satisfied with this season of her life.

Luke cooked breakfast for the entire family that morning, and after copious cups of coffee and hot chocolate were consumed, they all piled out to the backyard to compete in building snow figures. Rory and Lorelai's were styled after Lorde this year instead of Bjork, while Jess and Jessica modeled theirs after Jack White. Later on, a roaring snowball fight ensued, with Jess and Logan allowing Rick to switch teams between them. By the end of the morning, he had almost mastered the art of creating his own snowball, even though he often resorted to wildly flinging snow at whoever was around him when the adults weren't chasing him down and coaxing him into fighting for their own side.

In the middle of this melee, Rory managed to pull Lorelai aside for a confidential chat.

"I talked to Logan last night," she told her mother.

"And?" Lorelai prompted, seeing Rick almost faceplant into the snow out of the corner of her eye and taking in a sharp breath. She saw Luke rush to his side and pick him up before he started wailing, and let out a sigh of relief that Rory didn't appear to notice.

"He's not ready to get married right now, either," Rory said as she let out a deep breath. "We've agreed to put it on the back burner for a few months."

"But you both agree it's something you want eventually?" Lorelai guessed.

"I don't know about that," Rory said uncertainly. "Logan says that he doesn't, either. But we've agreed not to let what other people think we should do become the determining factor in it, either."

"I'm glad," Lorelai told her daughter. "But Rory, even if things don't work out – "

"I know, Mom," Rory said impatiently. "The thing is, Mom – I actually think I've kind of reached a nice balance right now. I don't need to change things. Even if things aren't as defined as everyone else thinks they should be – it doesn't mean that I shouldn't be happy with them."

"Are you?" Lorelai asked her.

"I am," Rory told her. "I really do believe that."

The two of them turned to look back at their family desecrating what remained of the morning's snowdrift, content within the chaos that they had created.


	16. Blueberry Pancakes (Rory and Jess, AU)

_So we have a literati debut in this drabble collection, taking place in a different AU than the other AU stories in this collection but whose implications should be familiar to many fans of this show._

 _This is in celebration of #NationalBlueberryPancakeDay. Enjoy!_

"Luke is going to kill me for all of this," Jess claimed from his perch behind the stove.

Rory looked up from where she sat behind the kitchen bar counter, making her way through a stack of blueberry pancakes. "Why?" she asked.

"Well, for starters, they're not coming back until tomorrow, and we don't have any extra baby clothes," he complained as he poked at the eggs in the pan. "I'm not sure he'd approve of the nutritional content of this meal, either."

Rory's gaze drifted over to her one-year-old brother, sitting beside her in his high chair. His plain-white T-shirt was completely covered in a mixture of maple syrup, bits of eggs and pancake fluff, and ordinary drool.

His languid blue gaze met Rory's briefly as he struggled to mouth another piece of pancake before half of it fell onto his lap.

"More," Will said defiantly as he turned to look at Jess.

Jess sighed as turned off the stove and transferred the eggs to a plate. He picked up a piece of sausage from the other plate and tore into in small bits before placing them on the baby's plate.

Will shot a gap-toothed grin in his direction before attempting to pick up the morsel and palm it into his mouth.

"I thought you weren't supposed to feed babies sausage," Rory remarked as she helped herself to a second helping of eggs, keeping an eye trained on her brother to make sure he didn't choke on any spare pieces of poultry.

"Lorelai said it was okay in moderation," Jess said as he made his way to the other side of the counter and sat down beside her with his own plate of breakfast food.

"Not a concept that Gilmores are much familiar with," Rory told him knowingly.

"Lucky for him he's got half his DNA coming from another direction," Jess said with a smirk.

His eyes remained locked on hers as Rory resisted the temptation to tease him back.

Besides, she knew that Jess was right. It had been apparent almost since birth that Will's bloodline was half Gilmore and half Danes, a reflection of two disparate personalities that had finally been brought together for good. He was sly and adventurous like his mother, yet cautious and reliable like his father with a tendency to rant in baby-speak when he was frustrated. Rory had enjoyed getting to witness his personality come to the forefront since she had been back in the area over the past few months, getting to know this little person that was now linked to her for life.

She remembered with regret the sibling rivalry that she felt over the arrival of her other half-sibling just a few years ago. She still didn't know Gigi very well, and her relationship with her biological father remained what it had always been - a series of voiced intentions and promises that both parties knew would never truly come to fruition. It was different with Will. He was the long hoped for a result of a union that had been years in the making, bound together by two people who loved each other as much as they loved him and their two older daughters. Rory had never felt as much of an ounce of resent over the fact that Will was being raised in the family that she had half wanted for herself during much of her childhood.

Maybe it was maturity, or the changing of circumstances, or the fact that she was now consumed with her own life to care much about what she had missed when she was growing up. Maybe it was the fact that she now was old enough to truly treasure the efforts her mother had gone through to bestow her with her own solitary brand of exuberant love and affection. Rory wasn't sure. All she knew now that her little's brother's existence had been brought forth from some sort of cosmic rightness exactly at the right moment.

Which is why she and her boyfriend were baby-sitting him on this June weekend while her mother and stepfather were ensconced at their mountain cabin retreat attempting to bring forth another version of him into the world.

Sometimes Rory did wish her mother observed more traditional boundaries when it came to relaying information.

Will wailed at just that moment as his remaining piece of pancake landed on the floor, knocking Rory out of her stupor.

Rory left her gaze drift over the kitchen counter with two remaining pancakes and turned to look at Jess imploringly.

"I'll go buy him some replacement baby clothes if you'll let us split the remaining pancakes," she offered.

Jess grunted as he got out of his seat to cut up one of the pancakes for Will. "I guess I don't have much of a choice," he told Rory.

"No," Rory replied. "You don't."

Jess returned his seat as Rory helped herself to the sole remaining pancake. "Have you thought any more about what we talked about last night?" he asked her as he shoved a bite of eggs into his mouth.

" _Which_ discussion?" Rory asked suggestively.

Jess chuckled and leaned forward. "Given our tiny guardian over there, I was referring to the first one. The second one can wait until his parents pick him up."

Rory placed a furtive hand on his thigh, reliving carnal thoughts of the previous night. "I'm thinking if you get your way on the first one you might get more of you want on the second," she suggested.

"Does that mean yes?" Jess asked.

Rory removed her hand from his thigh and reached for her glass of orange juice. "It doesn't mean no," she told him.

Jess put his fork down. "Are you serious about this?"

"I'm not saying I want to give up the apartment in New York and move my things in tomorrow," Rory clarified. "I'm saying that after the past year and a half of moving around from place to place I'm ready to be stationary. And when it comes to being stationary, I'd like to be stationary in a place that isn't an hour and a half away from you."

"I'm not saying you'd have to move in here right away," Jess said gently. "It's a pretty big step for both of us. And we've only been back together a few months."

"I know," Rory agreed. "That's why I'm still pondering things. But you know, Jess, the wanderlust – I think it's worn off in me. It's not that I didn't enjoy going to those other places – "

"Ireland was a particular favorite of mine," Jess said.

Rory blushed, reminded of their unexpected reunion in the Irish countryside last February. "I didn't want to live in those places, Jess," she told him. "I wanted to be home in a place that I remembered. None of those other places felt right."

"And you feel like Philadelphia could feel right?"

Rory reached out for his hand. "I think it could," she said softly.

"And the practical stuff? The job?"

"The arts papers here like me," Rory said. "That's a good place to start, isn't it?"

"It's excellent," Jess said as he leaned in for a kiss.

"RORY!" Will yelled as his plate clattered to the floor, ever the impatient little brother.

Rory giggled as she and Jess turned her attention to the toddler, their happy moment briefly interrupted by more pressing concerns.


	17. Puppies (Rory and Logan, AU)

_Okay, we're going back to our usual AU in this drabble series, where Logan and Rory are happily married and living in California. This chapter does have some references to the Black Cat chapter of this series but you don't have to read that first._

 _This is in celebration of **#NationalPuppyDay.**_

"Surprise!" Rory announced as she opened the hastily wrapped file box in front of her.

Logan looked on with curiosity as a beagle puppy tried to clumsily extricate himself from the box. Rory picked him up and deposited him on the hardwood floor of their living room.

Logan hesitantly met Rory's gaze. "Really?" he asked. "A puppy?"

"Okay, I know we're primarily cat people, but hear me out," Rory began. "You know my friend Toni, over at the Mercury News? She just left for a staff position at the Chronicle and they don't have enough room at their new apartment for their dog and the puppies – "

"Puppies," Logan interjected. "Plural. Where's the other one?"

"Her mom is keeping the other one," Rory replied. "They've both had all of their shots and are completely healthy. He's not full trained yet, but we can work on that. What do you think?"

Logan slowly sank down to the floor as the puppy tentatively made his way over to him. "How long have you been planning this?" he asked his wife.

"I haven't been planning anything," Rory insisted. "I didn't even know about him until a few days ago."

"But you drove all the way down to San Jose to get him this morning?"

"I left from here, not from the city," Rory clarified. "That's part of the benefit of moving to this neighborhood, right? Anyway, I wanted you to see him before I told her yes."

The puppy drew in Logan's gaze with his plaintive brown stare. Logan slowly picked him up and steeled his eyes on his.

He wondered if Rory had specifically picked out the puppy that he knew would be the easiest sell.

He looked up at Rory, who shot him a hopeful smile as she placed her hands on her knees.

"I like him," Logan admitted. "And he seems pretty calm."

"But – "

"I'm just wondering how he fits into our current plans," Logan continued. "I kind of want to know that we're on the same page as far as that goes."

Rory's eyes seemed to momentarily cloud over, and Logan felt slightly regretful. They've had their share of tearful discussions over that topic, and it still grieved him to even remember them. They had gradually gotten to a point where they could discuss their disappointments rationally and even dispassionately, but he knew it still hurt.

The hard truth of their situation cut her to the core when she least expected it. He didn't think that would ever change. It hadn't changed for him.

"We're still on the same page," Rory affirmed. "I want to weigh all our medical options before we commit to anything." She grinned as the puppy got up from Logan's lap and toddled over to her. "He isn't a replacement for that."

"Going to be a crowded house, though," Logan pointed out. "Three cats, a puppy, and – "

"-whatever comes next," Rory finished for him.

Logan returned her smile. "Whatever comes next."

They lapsed into silence for a few seconds, pondering their slightly adjusted future.

"Ae we still stuck on literary names?" Rory asked. "Because we might try for something more conventional with a dog."

Logan raised his eyebrows. "Just the dog?"

Rory chortled. "Maybe."

"I was thinking we could go modern," Logan suggested. "Jonathan Franzen?"

"Or Safran Foer," Rory pointed out. "Ugh."

"Cormac McCarthy," Logan suggested.

"Does he look like a Cormac to you?" Rory asked. "I think we'd need a _hound_ for that kind of name."

Logan sighed. "Ian McEwan?"

The puppy immediately pricked up his ears.

"We might have a winner," Rory proclaimed.

"One of many," Logan agreed. "One of many."


	18. French Fries (Luke and Lorelai, AU)

_This is a fast-forward I wrote for my story **Full Circle** to commemorate #NationalFrenchFryDay._

 _I don't know if I'll ever return to writing that story, so here's an update to explain a few things. After Luke and Lorelai got back together in 2007, they worked out their issues, blended their families, married, and had a son and a daughter. Rory's love triangle went through its expected cycles while she was the campaign trial with Obama, but after having some experiences on her own she settled down with Jess and they had a daughter as well. The two girls were born within months of each other, so yes – Lorelai and Rory were pregnant at the same time._

 _This story takes place a little over a year after that point._

 _And yes, this is a sequel to the blueberry pancakes chapter earlier in this series._

"It's a competition," Lorelai insisted, shifting slightly in her chair as she scooted her granddaughter closer to the table. The typically placid toddler looked down from Lorelai's lap at the two plates placed strategically in front of her.

"It's not a competition," Luke insisted as he moved one plate closer to their daughter sitting in her booster seat between their two chairs.

Margeary looked at her father innocently before turning her head towards her mother and flashing an exuberant grin in her direction.

She may have inherited Luke's eyes and coloring, but his daughter was Lorelai through and through. Even at sixteen months, she had an endless zest to defeat every challenge that was set in front of her. And that didn't even count the ones that she sought out for herself

"Daddy," Will said in a warning tone from his seat at the other side of the table.

"Everything's okay, Will," Luke assured him. He picked up a handful of carrot sticks from one of the offerings in front of the girls and placed them on his son's plate.

Will frowned before picking up the carrot stick and knowing on it solemnly.

"He was supposed to grow out of these healthy habits by the time he was three," Lorelai whispered to her daughter and granddaughter.

Leigh Erin worriedly looked at both of her grandparents and then turned her gaze to the aunt that was barely two months older than her. Margeary giggled and nodded at her niece mischievously.

"Mama," Will called out, ever the peacemaker.

Leigh Erin looked up at her grandmother, worry creeping into her brown gaze.

Luke coughed as Margeary banged her hands on the table, her patience growing thin.

"Enough stalling, girls," Lorelai said as she and Luke placed carrot sticks and French fries before the two girls on their plates. "Time to pick your teams."

Margeary gingerly picked up a carrot stick before dropping it on her plate like it was poisonous.

Lorelai chuckled at seeing the identical frowns on both her husband and son's faces as the toddler picked up three French fries and quickly palmed them into her mouth.

"Yum, right?" Lorelai encouraged her daughter.

Margeary nodded vigorously as she picked up another fry and chomped on it.

"I'm going to do my best to curb this behavior," Luke told his wife.

"Um, that's what I said about Mr. Healthy Eater over here," Lorelai said as she gestured to her son across the table. "It hasn't worked yet."

"Carrots taste _good_ ," Will attempted to argue.

"Well, your sister begs to differ," Lorelai replied. "So now we've got to rely on Leigh Erin to break the tie."

Leigh Erin gingerly reached for a carrot and tentatively bit at it.

She grimaced and spit it out quickly.

Luke sighed. "I guess she doesn't like it solid form, either," he commented as he wiped his granddaughter's face.

"I warned Rory and Jess that forcing her on a diet of homemade baby food was going to backfire on them," Lorelai commented as she handed Leigh Erin her sippy cup of water.

"They don't even do that anymore," Luke reminded her.

"Yeah, that's the thing with having two kids right on top of each other," Lorelai said as she kept a trained eye on her daughter's face as she continued to chomp on fries. "You don't have time to sweat over these details."

"Are you still worried about her going into labor overseas?" Luke asked.

Lorelai sighed. "Trying not to think about it," she said as she pulled her granddaughter's plate closer to her.

"This trip is only for two months," Luke assured his wife. "She'll barely be six months along by the time they come back. And Jess is going to be there to keep a sharp eye on her and Leigh Erin the entire time they'll be there. He knows how to make Rory take care of herself."

"I know, Luke," Lorelai said, trying to keep her fears from creeping into her voice. "I know."

Leigh Erin picked up a French fry and looked at it suspiciously.

"Yum," Lorelai said encouragingly.

"Yum!" Margeary cried out next to her.

"Not yum," Will insisted.

Leigh Erin clumsily shoved half of the fry into her mouth and swallowed it before reaching for a second.

"I believe we have a winner!" Lorelai exclaimed as she stole one of her granddaughter's fries for herself.

Will sighed exasperatingly, seemingly defeated.

However, Lorelai could see a glimmer of a smile start to light up her husband's face.


End file.
